Monday, September 29, 2014

Gordon
Minton Wickstrom died at the age of 88 on September 18, 2014, after fighting
cancer since the preceding April. He was born on April 26, 1926, in Boulder. Wickstrom
was Professor of Theatre at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania from 1971 to 1990, and Department Chair from 1976 until his
retirement in 1990 as Alumni Professor of English Belles Lettres and
Literature. Upon retirement, he and his wife, Betty Jane Smith Wickstrom, also
a Boulder native, returned to Boulder. They have lived since then in a house built
on the back yard of the family home on Bluff Street, where both his
grandparents, of Boulder City Bakery, and his parents lived.

Wickstrom
was a master fly fisherman and fly-tier, who began fishing at age 12 with a rod
and reel that his mother and father, Thelma and Percy Wickstrom, gave to him
for his birthday. His knowledge of Boulder Creek and the watersheds of the
mountains surrounding Boulder, combined with his fishing and his consummate
expertise in the theatre, especially the plays of the Irish Renaissance, of
Bernard Shaw and of Shakespeare, developed into many forms of writing and publication
to which Wickstrom was devoted. He is the author of two books. Notes from an Old Fly Book, from
University Press of Colorado came out in 2001, and Late in an Angler’s Life, from University of New Mexico Press, came
out in 2004. He made many contributions to the distinguished The American Fly Fisher, which is the
journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. With illustrations from John
Betts and graphic design from Michael Signorella, he published a graphic
history of fly-fishing, along with a unique dramatic piece, The Great Debate. For over ten years he published
two gazettes, cherished by readers across the country and internationally, The Bouldercreek Angler, and The Bouldercreek Actor. He also wrote
for his blog, The Boulder Creek Angler(http://bouldercreekangler.blogspot.com),
posting his last essay, “The Fisherman,” on September 5, 2014. He said that, in
the blog, he wrote on “all matters of art, life, love and angling.” He was a
member of the Boulder Fly Casters and the illustrious Flyfishers’ Club of
London.

Wickstrom
was a WWII veteran, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 until 1945. He received
his degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in English Literature in
1950, funded by the GI Bill of Rights. Subsequently, Wickstrom began his
teaching career at Powell High School in Powell, Wyoming, where his two
children, Linnea and Maurya, were born, in 1951 and 1959 respectively. While in
Powell, Wickstrom pioneered in the theatre, directing the plays of the European
avant-garde of the time, such as those by Samuel Beckett. In 1966, the family
moved to Palo Alto, California, where Wickstrom earned his Ph.D, at Stanford
University, with a dissertation on the Deidre plays of three Irish playwrights.

Over
the years Wickstrom directed over 100 plays, including directing and acting at
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Upon retirement, and with J.H. Crouch as
partner, he founded The Shakespeare Oratorio Society of Colorado in 1995. Each
winter the society produced one of Shakespeare’s plays in their radically
different “oratorical” format. Wickstrom played King Lear for the third time in
the maiden production of the society. Wickstrom’s brother, Phillip, played
Gloucester and became a regular with the company.

He
was ever, and remained to the end, a convinced and practical Democrat.

He
is survived by his wife of ­­­66 years, Betty Jane Wickstrom; his daughter
Linnea Wickstrom and her spouse, Peter Maresca, and their son, Per Wickstrom-Maresca;
daughter Maurya Wickstrom and her spouse, Joel Reynolds, and their son, Naoise
Reynolds and their daughter,Erin Reynolds. He
is also survived by his brother Phillip Wickstrom, the two who were, always,
“Thelma and Percy’s boys.”

A
service was held on Wednesday, September 24th at Ryssby church and
Gordon’s ashes were interred at the Green Mountain cemetery near his
grandparents.

Wickstrom
asked that his friends be directed toShakespeare’s
Sonnet #73, and, in the spirit of Dean John Donne of St. Paul’s, think on death
as the most interesting, exciting, mysterious, and disastrous thing that can
happen to us.

Friday, September 5, 2014

If from me, when all is done, there are any
words left over, let them be these:

Hurrying down Boulder Canyon early one
sullen spring morning, just rounding a bend, I saw him, down in the creek, a
fisherman working his flies in silhouette over the silvered water. I saw him
only for an instant, a spectral image in black, cut into the creek beyond him.
He looked out of another time and place, but I knew him, remembered him.

I wanted to give him a Boulder name, that
of some old habitué of Boulder Creek. He might have been E.B. Edwards, Charlie
Sundquist, or Nick Schons. Maybe he was One-Armed Billie Marquette, Bill Smith,
Al Olson, or Lasses Ralston. In any case, this was the original, the model, the
archetype that can flash on consciousness and remind us of sources, beginnings,
and raise floods of sensation and memory.

By naming him, I thought I might perhaps
anchor myself more securely into the legend of this landscape, my native
watershed, the water out of which my mother made me.

Forms and images like this, I know, are as
old as time and have this powerful way of taking on a local habitation and a
name. But, at this instant, no single name seemed right. The image remained,
simply, The Fisherman.

That instant of vision on the creek, sent
shivers through me that were slow to subside. Seeing a ghost, I thought, must
be like this.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

There is so much
out there to make us feel bad, such a variety of things, so much that we
cannot change, and one thing that never changes is the penchant for us old
folks to disparage and despair of the young. About whom we are usually and
historically wrong. To our dismay, these kids simply will not be like us,
even when they are fond of us. They insist on going their own way, while we
go on in our own, for them, wrong ways. And history always seems to come out
on their side, as It came out on yours and mine.